chris collins is a scary wizard

I thought Rutgers would be the least likely team to find itself atop the conference standings this season. I was wrong!

Northwestern went 3-17 in the Big Ten last year. They're now 3-0 this season after following up last week's upset of Michigan State with victories against Indiana and Ohio State. Here are the results from last week's conference slate (home team listed second):

• Purdue 55, Iowa 70
• Nebraska 53, Wisconsin 67
• Rutgers 68, Ohio State 80
• Penn State 81, Illinois 98
• Northwestern 74, Indiana 67
• Iowa 95, Minnesota 102 (OT)
• Wisconsin 85, Michigan State 76
• Michigan 80, Nebraska 69
• Maryland 70, Purdue 73
• Indiana 60, Illinois 69
• Ohio State 70, Northwestern 71

It was a particularly good week for Northwestern and Illinois and a rough one for Indiana, which lost to both aforementioned teams. Meanwhile, the most entertaining game of the week was Iowa's late collapse and eventual overtime loss at Minnesota. The Hawkeyes still can't guard anybody.

The Standings

Now ordered by conference record since everyone has actually played multiple Big Ten games.

	Record			KP/Torvik Avg			OFFENSE			DEFENSE
Team	Overall	Big Ten		Nat Rk (change)	Proj. B1G Rec.		KenPom	Torvik		KenPom	Torvik
NWern	6-1	3-0		46.5 (up 6.5)	10-10		56th	38th		45th	45th
WIS	8-1	2-0		3.5 (down 0.5)	14.5-5.5		9th	7th		4th	5th
U-M	7-0	2-0		14.0 (up 0.5)	12-8		10th	11th		30th	32nd
ILL	7-3	3-1		6.5 (up 3)	13-7		5th	5th		38th	47th
RUT	6-1	2-1		20.5 (down 1)	11-9		32nd	33rd		15th	18th
PUR	7-3	2-1		34.5 (down 5.5)	10.5-9.5		33rd	50th		36th	28th
IOWA	7-2	1-1		8.0 (up 2)	11.5-8.5		2nd	2nd		92nd	141st
MIN	8-1	1-1		45.5 (up 9)	9-11		22nd	45th		58th	66th
OSU	7-2	1-2		21.5 (up 0.5)	9.5-10.5		8th	9th		48th	80th
IND	5-4	0-2		20.5 (down 6)	9.5-10.5		57th	64th		10th	6th
MSU	6-2	0-2		32.0 (down 4)	9-11		11th	19th		61st	67th
PSU	3-3	0-2		47.5 (down 5)	8-12		27th	28th		72nd	61st
UMD	5-3	0-2		52.5 (up 1.5)	7.5-12.5		16th	24th		84th	117th
NEB	4-5	0-2		103.0 (up 3.5)	4-16		148th	138th		98th	48th

The top-to-bottom strength of the conference is remarkable; 13 of the 14 teams are inside the top 55 nationally when you average KenPom and Torvik rankings. KenPom predicts all 13 of those teams to finish with at least eight conference wins, leaving Nebraska—which isn't an awful bottom-end power conference team!—with a projected 3-17 record.

Even with that 3-0 start, Northwestern is predicted to finish .500 in Big Ten play. Ohio State and Indiana are projected to finish with losing conference records despite sitting just outside the top 20 teams in the country; ditto MSU at #32. It's a scarily strong league; the Big Ten and Big 12 are well in front of the rest of the pack in KenPom's conference rankings with the former topping the list. Fox Sports' latest (way too early) bracket has 11 B1G squads in the field with Wisconsin/Iowa as two-seeds and Michigan/Illinois as three-seeds.

[Hit THE JUMP for five-out Northwestern, State's terrible defensive profile, and more.]

Things discussed:

• Shutting down Carsen Edwards was a team effort
• Surprised Haarms hasn't progressed more.
• Northwestern hit a lot of weird shots, good defensive team.
• Poole and Brazdeikis are their best isolation players but that's not their offense
• Brian not so hard on Austin Davis—blamed the refs.
• The 14-2 run with Teske on the bench with foul trouble was too stark
• Could use less Matthews usage but that's not gonna change
• Post-Michigan coaching comments
• Defensive strategy leads to fewer fouls: not a lot of help/reach-ins
• The Big Ten is deep, some poor bubble team is going 8-12 in this league.

You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Podbean.

Segment two is here. Segment three is here.

THE USUAL LINKS

• Helpful iTunes subscribe link
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• Direct download link
• What's with the theme music?

"I turn on the game and I'm like who is this 60 year old freshman?

Important (not important). This is a frog.

I have been exhorted to call this MGoFrog and make it a thing. I'm afraid that by doing so I will give Adidas an idea for a Michigan uniform, unfortunately.

Important (important). Will Heininger features in an Outside The Lines article on mental health issues for athletes:

"I had emotional pain that was overwhelming; I would wake up, and from morning until I feel asleep -- when I was able sleep -- I had troubling thoughts that were utterly consuming," said the 2011 Michigan honors graduate. "Not a minute would go by in a day, without my depression on my mind … this, this felt impossible."

One of the things CAPA is fighting for is better treatment for these sorts of issues; read the whole thing. Both of the whole things.

"Please enjoy this punch in the nuts." –DJ Newbill

CHAOS! Did you happen to watch the rote blowouts in the Big Ten last night? You did not, because Ohio State and Wisconsin lost to Penn State and Northwestern, respectively. At home. As our own BISB said:

Michigan and Michigan State are like two dudes in a hot air balloon over Pompeii right now.

— Bry Mac (@Bry_Mac) January 30, 2014

Yes. They're trying to push each other into the lava, but yes. Or Adam Jacobi:

The Big Ten Is Full of Blood and Spiders

Jacboi has a nice table that indicates the upcoming "no days off in the Big Ten"/"this conference is so deep" announcer memes are in fact on point:

Year	Conf. Rating	Rank	Avg. B1G	Worst Team	Rating
2003	.7688	5	No. 56	Penn State	210
2004	.7520	5	No. 62	Penn State	218
2005	.7862	3	No. 47	Penn State	215
2006	.7831	4	No. 54	Purdue	152
2007	.8058	4	No. 51	Minnesota	170
2008	.7625	5	No. 65	Northwestern	192
2009	.8144	5	No. 46	Indiana	209
2010	.7851	4	No. 60	Indiana	198
2011	.8527	1	No. 31	Iowa	92
2012	.8263	1	No. 32	Nebraska	150
2013	.8459	1	No. 34	Penn State	148
2014	.8310	1	No. 42	Northwestern	118

The closest thing to an easy out is the Northwestern team that is a half-game out of a first round bye in the Big Ten tourney; there's not even a last year's Penn State to kick around. There's a last year's Penn State plus Tim Frazier. See cliff above.

This is good and bad for Michigan. In the Kenpom world it's good since Michigan's beaten PSU handily and has yet to play OSU, but in the NCAA seeding world you get more credit for beating 6-seed OSU and terrible PSU than you get for beating 10-seed OSU and mediocre PSU. Neither of these effects are huge, so the correct reaction is probably just to point and laugh*. (And fume at how bad Big Ten refs are.)

*[But probably not at Aaron Craft. He got crossed over for the game winner, which was Newbill rushing a wrist-flick shot because Craft was coming. Meanwhile, Tim Frazier's statline: 8 points on 9 shot attempts, 7 assists, 6 TO. No offense to Derrick Walton, but put Craft on this Michigan team and they are a juggernaut. I shouldn't have mentioned this.]

Bill Carmody: gone, but not forgotten

The Wildcat conundrum. Meanwhile, we've been talking about how fascinating Northwestern is on the podcast for the last couple weeks. And boy, aren't they? Last year they were extremely bad, around 140th on both sides of the ball. The Wildcats then:

• fired Bill Carmody
• hired Chris Collins
• graduated two low-usage, mediocre efficiency seniors
• graduated a high usage, low efficiency senior
• got Drew Crawford back
• added a pretty terrible offensive player in freshman Sanjay Lumpkin, who they play starter's minutes

For some reason, the result is a massively unbalanced version of the team they were last year. Northwestern is 11th(!!!) in defensive efficiency on Kenpom for no discernable reason whatsoever. They have plummeted to 320th on offense. Their games are incredibly watchable for unwatchable games, because you're always trying to unravel the mystery of why the Wildcats are elite on defense. It makes no sense. No sense at all. Here's John Gasaway trying to figure it out.

Meanwhile, Northwestern is a half-game out of a first-round bye in the Big Ten Tournament and that gets BIG TENNNN, right? I think that's a BIG TENNNN.

By the way. Michigan shot 63% from two against the Wildcats and averaged 1.21 points per possession, and Alex Olah—Gasaway's best guess as to why NW is playing so much better D—was on the court for 30 minutes.

Recruiting battles past. OSU has a couple of guys on their team that Michigan pursued, and it's interesting to see their development. Or lack thereof, as the case may be.

Michigan stopped recruiting Amadeo Della Valle so they could go after Caris LeVert, who was right under OSU's nose. OSU grabs ADV; Michigan gets LeVert. In year two, Della Valle is a very poor man's LeVert: a skinny shooting guard with some ability to drive, but one who's only getting 30% of OSU's minutes as they struggle to generate anything on offense. LeVert generates a lot of assists; ADV is generating few. Hell, LeVert has replaced about 95% of Tim Hardaway's production a year after Michigan was trying to redshirt him.

The context of the team is important, but it seems like that Michigan made the right choice on that one.

The other guy on the OSU roster Michigan was involved with is Amir Williams, OSU's mercurial center. Williams has oven mitts for hands and gets pulled on the regular despite OSU's near total lack of post players to replace him with; he has seemingly not improved one whit from the absentminded freshman I remember from two years ago. Michigan was never really a consideration for Williams, but it's kind of amazing that OSU would probably trade him for Jordan Morgan without blinking.

Either way. In yesterday's post on Northwestern's prospective union I mentioned that the NLRB had flipped back and forth on the issue of student-employees being able to organize based on assertions from a 2006 paper. In that paper the most recent ruling had gone against the students trying to organize. Well, that has again flipped:

“There’s case law for the NLRB involving teaching assistants which supports their position,” Baum said. “There have been different decisions both ways. What they’re saying is that this really is a form of litigation to bring about change because they’re asking for something very similar.”

In December 2013, the American Arbitration Association announced that graduate teaching and research assistants at New York University had officially unionized. The group is the only graduate assistants’ union at a private university in the U.S.

Demonstrating the volatility of the NLRB, graduate assistants at NYU were granted the ability to negotiate a union contract and both improved health benefits and increased stipends in 2000. But in 2005 the ruling was switched following a case involving Brown graduate assistants in which the NLRB ruled that graduate assistants are students, not employees, and therefore cannot unionize.

The recent overturn of the 2005 ruling, though, is an encouraging sign for the newly formed CAPA.

One gets the sense that the NLRB tends to blow whichever way the White House does. In CAPA's case there seems to be no way to put the cat back in the bag if Northwestern does indeed get certified, so now is as good a time to strike as any.

Typical. FERPA means whatever Universities want it to mean, so the university says they will not release any details about Brendan Gibbons. This is in line with the university's general stance on releasing information—don't do it, because we have to cover our ass. Suspicious in most cases, here it verges on appalling given the fact that FERPA specifically states this:

The text of FERPA notes that the law shouldn’t “be construed to prohibit an institution of postsecondary education from disclosing the final results of any disciplinary proceeding conducted by such institution against a student who is an alleged perpetrator of any crime of violence … or a nonforcible sex offense, if the institution determines as a result of that disciplinary proceeding that the student committed a violation of the institution’s rules or policies with respect to such crime or offense.”

With lurid conspiracy theories flying back and forth, everyone would be better off if Michigan came forth and showed everyone exactly what happened to expel a student four years after the incident that got him expelled transpired. This is not an athletic department thing, but rather a larger pattern of CYA secrecy that's beneath the university. Or at least should be.

Etc.: Spilly's quest for balls. Death to the neutral site game. Penn State is discounting season tickets for recent grads. Men's basketball standings. Michigan gets a 2016 D commit.